Economics of planemaking in the 19th century

[Kees Heiden]

In light of a recent thread that's better quietly left alone, I did some research to the economic side of wooden planemaking in the nineteenth century. Maybe one or two readers are interested, so I won't let my work go to waste and post it in this new thread.

Just like all manufactoring in the 19th century, planemaking went from small scale businesses, more or less on the master-apprentice basis, to large scale factories at the end of the century. More so in the USA with big brands like Sandusky and Union. Less so in Britain where small shops just grew a little larger, like the Marples shop with 10 benches in 1909. Sandusky had 36 benches, and a lot of specialised machines. Much of the work was done with special kinds of morticers. Fitting of wedge and blade was still handwork. The man who did this work fitted 200 planes a day, 3 minutes each! At the height of production Sandusky made 70000 planes a year. With 300 working days in a year, that means 7 planes a day per bench. (Data comes from Whelan: Making traditional wooden planes).

In the Netherlands the guild of planemakers dissapeared at the end of the 18th century. Small planemaking shops gradualy dissapeared too. First the company Peter Duesing took over. Later in the 19th century Nooitgedagt was the largest plane making company. Duesing started making planes in 1830. They had a 14 hp steam engine for cutting and sizing the wood, I don't know if they also had morticing machines. Overall it never was a huge factory. In 1894 there were 12 people, producing about 15000 planes. When you assume 10 people doing the actual planemaking ( the other two doing all the other jobs neccessary to run a business) that makes 5 planes being made per day per man. Nooitgedagt was a larger company. Started in 1865. 13 man and 3 children working for him in 1880. And in 1902 about 50 man. They didn't make planes only but also all kinds of other wooden carpentry tools. A seperate line where iceskates. Nooitgedagt had his own blacksmith shop to produce plane irons. (Data from v.d. Sterre, 4 centuries of planemaking in The Netherlands).

So, 5 to 7 planes a day. When you ever made planes yourself this sounds pretty remarkable! To get an insight in the workmanship and type of working environment of these specialists it's allways nice to watch the swiss video from the Raggenbass planemakers in Geneva.
http://www.rts.ch/archives/tv/cultur...s-de-bois.html

What kind of costs are we talking about? We can look at contemporary pricelists. The toolemera website has a nice selection. The oldest one is from Joseph Clark, Newcastle in England from 1816. A single iron smoother is 2 shilling, the double iron variation is 3 shilling. Converting to US dollars, that would be about $0.56 and $0.84. (I used a varied mix of conversion programs on the Internet, so it's probably not 100% accurate). A later catalog, the Arrowmammet Works in Midletown, Conn from 1858, also quotes the prices for plane irons. That's interesting because we now can make a guess about the costs of making a wooden plane.
A simple smoother with cast iron blade. Single iron, $0.45, double iron, $0.70.
When we look at the price of 2" irons, a pretty standard size for a smoother, we find:
Single irons, $2.- per dozen, makes 17 cents each. Double iron $4.125 per dozen, makes 34 cents each.
Interesting to see that a buyer payed a premium when he wanted a double iron plane. The double iron plane is 25 cents more expensive then the single iron plane, while the double iron itself is only 17 cents more. At that time the single iron plane was obviously regarded as an inferior product.
http://toolemera.com/Trade%20Catalog...talog1800.html

When we want to know the labor costs of making a plane. We need to know how much a planemaker earned in these days. I googled a bit around to find wages in the 18th century and compared a few articles. A carpenter could expect to earn about $1.50 a day in 1816 and $1.70 in 1858 (http://www.nber.org/chapters/c2486.pdf table 2, page 462). When we assume such a carpenter, specialised in the planemaking trade, made 7 planes a day in the Arrowmammet Works in 1858, then this makes 24 cents per plane. The wholesale price for a sinle iron was 17 cents, but the works themselves made them somewhat cheaper of course. So how about 12 cent for the iron? Beech was cheap, but needed to be cut and sized. Then the other expenses like energy, rent, interest on loans etc. Another 5 cents? There wasn't really much room for profit.
24 + 12 + 5 = 41 cents for a single iron plane. Selling price only 45 cents.

While the buying power of our current money is usually a lot better then in the 19th century, this seems not to be the case with wooden planes. It is a bit of a niche market of course. The only suppliers of western wedged wooden planes, made in a factory and of reasonable quality nowadays is ECE in Germany (as far as I know). A double iron smoother is 70 euro (http://www.fine-tools.com/putzh.htm). A carpenter in Germany gets around 1500 euro a month, that is 75 euros a day. So, the plane costs almost a full daily wage now, verses only 1/2 in the 1800's.

I hope this was mildly interesting to everyone interested in the history of our tools. I would apreciate comments and corrections, because I am of course no historian, nor especially knowledgable in financial matters.

[george wilson]

Kees,an interesting read. What does Nooitgedagt mean,please?

[Will Boulware]

Mildly interesting? This was fascinating! Thanks for the insight!

[David Weaver]

There's a lot of documentation of the chapin company in one of Gary's (father's) printings, I just don't remember the details too well, except that the rate that makers made the planes was pretty alarming.

Water power was the mode there, IIRC, and there was some discussion in the beginning of the book about locating a supply of already dried timber before settling on a spot (so the drying, at least initially, was done by someone else and the maker was buying stock that was seasoned and ready).

You have a good supply of steamed and stable beech in europe, even if maybe it's not that easy to find in plane billet sizes. It can be a chore to find it here in any quantity, don't know if that would be different if there was a maker making 100 planes a day, but we regulate business out of existence here, so there won't be such a maker no matter what.

[Jason Coen]

There's a lot of documentation of the chapin company in one of Gary's (father's) printings, I just don't remember the details too well, except that the rate that makers made the planes was pretty alarming.

Kenneth Roberts was his father? Huh, I never made that connection.

That's Wooden Planes in 19th Century America: Volume II that details the Chapin factory. I've got Volume I here in front of me. I'll dig through it today if I get some time.

[David Weaver]

I think it's Gary's dad. There's a foreword in my book (or one of my books), but it's been a while since I read it and I was really reading through it looking for commentary to apply in making some planes. My books came as NOS copies from Gary when he found some boxes full of books.

[Kees Heiden]

Nooitgedagt is the name of the man. His name was Jaris Nooitgedagt. It means something like "Never thought of that" in English.

That book from Kenneth Roberts sounds very interesting. I'll try to find a copy (if you can still find it at a reasonable price).

Edit: Hmm, just googled. Looks a little dear....

[george wilson]

I have often wondered what the name meant!!

[David Weaver]

Edit: Hmm, just googled. Looks a little dear....

The NOS copies that Gary came across were about $25 at the time (or maybe it was $38 and another book was $25, whatever it was, it wasn't that much). I'd imagine that makes them now a good target to be one of those very expensive books on amazon where the secondary market price is nutty and the books never actually sell.

[Kees Heiden]

I saw a set from a British old tool dealer. 350 pounds!

[Joe Hillmann]

An interesting bit of history, but your conversions to days worked to buy a plane then and now don't seem vary accurate. Or, at least not apples to apples.

The planes from the 1800's were mass produced and used in every wood shop in the country with lots of competition of plane makers so they had to keep there prices low. The modern day one you are comparing them to are a top of the line eccentric tool that is bought by a very small percentage of woodworkers who care about more then the plane working, it is almost a piece of art as well. Also the modern plane maker has no or very little competition.

I don't really there is a modern day equivalent to the wood planes made in then 1800's. You could say they were mass produced to sell at a price everyone can afford, so they should be compared to a $24 Stanley you can buy at Home Depot. Or you could say they were the go to tool of production shops, so you should compare it to a modern electric planer or jointer.

Then there is also the fact that iron and for sure steal is much cheaper now then it was 200 years ago and the price also changed a lot with location. As an example a pair of cast iron scissors in the 1790's in Wisconsin would cost a company man (Fur trappers) about two days wages or a non company man 1- 1 1/2 days wages. You can now run to wallmart and buy the best pair of fabric shears for less then $30.

Although I do think that comparing what something cost to days working is the the best way to compare buying power, there are many other things to take into consideration as well.

[David Weaver]

I think the scissors comparison is different than planes. Good scissors are a bear to make by hand because of the way they have to close, they can't just be straight blades.

For consideration on expense, though look at files. Gary Roberts has a 1890 or so nicholson file catalog, and a mill bastard file in an appreciable size is almost a dollar. A day's wage back then was probably about 2 or 3 dollars.

The other thing that creeps into a days wage is productivity. You get a lot more goods for a day's wage in 2013 than you would've in 1900. Maybe not all are as well made as we'd like, but there are certainly things nobody could've dreamed of in 1900. A set of chisels that costs a day's wage now represents a larger slice of the entire economy.

[Joe Hillmann]

Dave,

You are probably right, the scissors may not be the best example but it is one that sticks in my mind from a 5th grade field trip to a voyageur reenactment. That was the example they used when they were saying how much a fur trapper was paid.

I also forgot to point out that crucibal steel wasn't "invented" in the west until the 1740's so steel for any fine cutting edge would have been much much more expensive then now. I realize that by 1800 60 years had passed so steel would have came down in price but still much more expensive than it is now. The blades were 1/3 the cost of the entire plane.

[Kees Heiden]

I think you and I are in agreement Joe. What I wanted to say is that good quality handplanes are relatively expensive today. The 24 dollar hardware store plane is not good quality. The ECE planes are decent stuff and probably some of the cheapest usable handplanes on the market. And they are made in a factory setting. Not handmade oneoffs. In Germany this is still a common plane (allthough they are seriously in decline).

It's very difficult to compare now and then. Overall we are about 7 to 9 times better of now when you look how much you can buy for your monthly wages.

[Kees Heiden]

There is one thing I forgot in my guestimates: taxes.
Taxes are a big deal nowadays in Europe. Adds considerably to the costs of everything. But I have no idea how it was in 19th century America.